Structured light systems may transmit and receive light patterns, or spatial codes, to generate a depth map. The farther away an object is from the transmitter and receiver, the smaller the disparity between the light pattern reflected by object and its original location will be, as the outgoing projection and incoming projection are more parallel. Conversely, the closer an object is to the transmitter and receiver, the bigger the disparity between received light pattern and its original position will be. Thus, the difference between received and transmitted light pattern (codeword) position gives the depth of the scene or object. Structured light systems use these relative depths to generate a depth map or a three dimensional representation of a scene. Depth map extraction is critical to many applications ranging from camera quality enhancement to computer vision.
Generating depth maps may be very computationally expensive, and computation time remains a major obstacle for commercialization of structured light systems for generating depth maps. As such, there exists a need for faster generation of depth maps.